My grandmother was an amazing woman. Brilliant, she graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Berkeley in 1923 (the first female to earn that honor). She taught high school, hunted big game in Alaska, owned multiple businesses, and served as a volunteer in multiple organizations until the month she died at the age of 92. I adored her. Of all the people in my childhood, Alice was the one I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt loved me and believed in me.
For Alice’s 88th birthday I decided to paint a picture for her. I chose to create a landscape with lots of green and a few brown tree trunks. I’d never taken a painting class, but how hard could it be? Extremely proud of myself, I framed my work of art and took it to her home where we were celebrating her life.
She loved my painting! It was clearly her favorite present. Alice raved, exclaiming her delight in my skill and praising the beauty of my work. She had me hang my painting so it was the first thing every visitor would see when they came to her door. I beamed, quite proud of myself. I had created a masterpiece. I was soaring high on the exhilaration of my success.
We were not the only guests at Alice’s birthday party, however. Another, whom I will not name, decided it would be funny to switch my painting with an alternative landscape that had hung in Alice’s bedroom. That painting had some greens and browns, and if truth be told, was quite beautiful.
My grandmother never noticed. She continued to point to the new painting while praising me. It was then that I realized my grandmother could not see clearly. She had severe cataracts in both eyes. Both paintings looked like green blobs to her. Everyone at the party laughed and joked about it the rest of the evening. They found it quite funny that grandma thought my painting was good. That I thought it was good.
Deflated, I gave up my painting experiment. For a time…